1 John 4:10 --- In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The Lord and I stayed in 1 John 4:10 today as there was more to explore. Yesterday started with Propitiation and went into how unfathomable the Father's love is for giving that propitiation, His only begotten Son, Jesus, for our sins. Today backs up to the beginning of the verse.
…not that we have loved God but that He loved us…
Something that jumped out to me in this part of the verse was, LOVED and LOVED. In English they look the same, a past tense verb. However, in the Greek we see something I thought was really awesome.
LOVED in the first part when it discusses us, is Agape (selfless/sacrificial love) but it's rendered in the Greek as Perfect tense. Meaning an action that is one time, complete, finished, never has to be done again. Interesting...
LOVED in the second part when it discusses God, is Agape as well but it's in the Aorist tense. Now this is a special verb tense in Greek that we don't have a direct equivalent for in English. In English we deal with past, present, future. This Aorist tense has no basis in time. It alludes to the fact that at some point the action began. It's always translated in past tense for English as the verb has occurred or began somewhere in time, but I just found this super interesting that God's love for us occurs outside of a hard definitive point in time. Absolutely amazing to me!
Why the English/Greek lessons on a Sunday morning, Phillip? Mainly because it's just where the Lord and I adventured together in His word today! However, He did lead me to this final pulling it all together.
We are not expected to produce, find, or scrape together some great act of selfless/sacrificial love for God. We couldn't even if we wanted to as this type of love exists only in God, in who He is. So, we cannot love God first and definitely cannot love Him with the agape type of love. BUT GOD…. Oh I love those two words because it's just so Him and it gets me really stirred up… okay focus… but God LOVED (agape, selflessly, sacrificially) us and sent His only begotten Son.
He loved us first! We only know what love is because He loved us first. We can only love with agape love because He loves us with it and it's His agape love through us that overflows to those around us.
We make it so hard sometimes. We humans want so desperately to be in control of our lives and futures and we desperately and futilely grasp to understand all the paths, all the outcomes, all the possibilities of our lives. We want to know the exact actions we need to take, the exact steps, and what the outcomes will be. In the end we either become control freaks, we spiral into depression, we distract ourselves from it, we become religious box checking zealots to control it, or we just run ourselves in circles over it until we collapse face first in the dirt.
I have pretty much done all of the above in my life until storms rolled in that brought me to a point of not being able to even breathe for 5 minutes, let alone work out tomorrow. He showed me a few truths while in my desperation to understand and know what to do.
First, He loved me. He showed up first (was always there actually). Then he led me in His word to the exact actions I needed to do.
Proverbs 3:5-6 --- Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.
1. TRUST in the Lord with all your heart.
2. DO NOT LEAN on your own understanding.
3. ACKNOWLEDGE (intimately, openly, deeply) in all your ways.
4. HE WILL MAKE your paths straight.
Want to be in control of something? There it is. You get to control your choice to obey this or not. You get to control whether you believe it even. I will say it saved my life, my families lives and has transformed EVERYTHING about our lives over the past 11 months. ALL because HE LOVED US FIRST and SENT His only Son Jesus.
Okay, I said enough. Adventuring with the Lord can take turns you don't expect. I wasn't expecting to get emotional and dive into this path, but I go where He goes.
I love and pray for each of you today.
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